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Kristen Martin

@kwistent.bsky.social
1.8K followers 1.4K following 985 posts

Author of THE SUN WON'T COME OUT TOMORROW, out now from Bold Type / critic with words in NYRB, NYT Mag, WaPo, The New Republic, and elsewhere / member Freelance Solidarity Project and National Book Critics Circle / Philly / kristenmartin.net

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Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Join me this fall for a redux of my popular hybrid memoir class with Blue Stoop, expanded and refreshed! We’ll meet via Zoom on Monday nights from late September through late November, and scholarships available to folks in the greater Philly area. Hit up bluestoop.org/classes for more!
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Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
New substack about this stack: americanorphan.substack.com/p/what-im-ya...
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Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
In print in the July/August issue of @newrepublic.com, and now online: my review of Zayd Ayers Dohrn’s brilliant book Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young newrepublic.com/article/2117...
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Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
I gotta hand it to the AI grifters, I loled at this one
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Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
Not only did my cousin Lucas help me get a galley of my book to Sarah Jessica Parker, he followed up with her like a year and a half later on a random post about a book she liked to confirm that she got it. King!
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Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 04/05/2026
All I ever want is to make Penny Loafer wear bows. She does not approve.
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Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 25/02/2026
Come see me at AWP next week!
A graphic with my AWP conference schedule: 

3/5-3/7
NATIONAL WRITERS
UNION / T134
COME SEE MY COMRADES AND ME
IN THE BOOKFAIR AND LEARN ABOUT ONLY LABOR UNION THAT REPRESENTS FREELANCE WRITERS WORKING IN ALL GENRES, FORMATS, AND MEDIUMS

3/6, 1:45-    A WRITERS'S PLACEIS IN A UNION PANEL / ROOM 310
3:00 PM

WITH DANIEL FELSENTHAL, MARY
RASENBERGER, AND TINA ONTIVEROS

3/7,
10:35-11:50 AM
MINING THE PAST: CREATIVE
NONFICTION IN THE ARCHIVES PANEL / ROOM 315
WITH HEATHER RADKE, JORDAN KISNER, HARRISON HILL, AND SASHA BONÉT
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Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 08/02/2026
Maybe what we need is to bring back the Teen People Book Club?
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Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 21/01/2026
My book THE SUN WON’T OUT TOMORROW: THE DARK HISTORY OF AMERICAN ORPHANHOOD turns ONE today!! Maybe you want to grab a copy? bookshop.org/p/books/the-...
Me wearing a red dress and posing with a giant cake with my book cover printed on it
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Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 19/01/2026
Timeline cleanse: Penny Loafer gets a bath
A wet tricolor cavalier King Charles spaniel with a green bath towel draped over her head. She’s mid-yawn with tongue sticking out
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Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 14/01/2026
Philly folks! Join me on February 4th (my half-birthday!) for a talk about my book at the Pen & Pencil! We will highlight some of the Philly connections in the book and talk about recent developments in foster care and family policing. Free and open to all; RSVP: www.penandpencil.org/content.aspx...
Pen & Pencil Club
Book Talk

Kristen Martin
with Jiordan Castle
on The Sun Won't Come Out Tomorrow

-Wednesday, February 4 at 7:00 PM
-1522 Latimer Street, Philadelphia, PA 19102
-RSVP at penandpencil.org
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Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 05/01/2026
(It’s much stupider now) (also pic of my mom and our dog Lucky Doodles)
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Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 19/12/2025
FYI Penny Loafer recommends my book THE SUN WON’T COME OUT TOMORROW: THE DARK HISTORY OF AMERICAN ORPHANHOOD. She rests easy with what she learned from it.
A tricolor cavalier King Charles spaniel napping next to a copy of the book THE SUN WON’T COME OUT TOMORROW
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Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 16/12/2025
Enormous and very good
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Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 15/12/2025
I feel that the people need a picture of Penny Loafer in her little booties
A tricolor cavalier King Charles wearing red booties
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Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 14/12/2025
The bots think I’m Andrew Ross Sorkin
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Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 24/11/2025
!!!! So gratified to have this story enjoy a wide reach, especially since foster care is a really under-covered topic. Read it here: www.newyorker.com/news/the-led...
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Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 11/11/2025
Convincing you to read THE SUN WON'T COME OUT TOMORROW: THE DARK HISTORY OF AMERICAN ORPHANHOOD by *also* sharing the first two paragraphs. Because I'm a giver. Share yours!
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Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 04/11/2025
Penny Loafer loves voting for PA Supreme Court judicial retention and for Philly DA Larry Krasner!
A tricolor cavalier King Charles spaniel wagging her tail, looking at an “I Voted!” sticker
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Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 26/10/2025
It’s Penny Loafer’s ninth birthday!
A tricolor cavalier King Charles spaniel with her tongue out, being given a dog cookie decorated like a frosted cupcake
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Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 22/09/2025
Philly folks! Join me and Jiordan Castle for a convo about my book THE SUN WON’T COME OUT TOMORROW this Thursday at the Penn Bookstore!
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Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 19/09/2025
I may never recover from the fact that Rider Strong AKA Shawn Hunter has READ MY BOOK and TALKED ABOUT IT and SAID MY NAME on this Boy Meets World podcast 😭😭😭
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Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 27/08/2025
Just one! Penny Loafer:
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Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 04/08/2025
It’s my 36th birthday—and my first as a published author! So yes, I am using this as yet another opportunity to say BUY MY BOOK and TELL PEOPLE ABOUT IT plz! bookshop.org/p/books/the-...
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Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 18/07/2025
These mourning dove babies were as shocked to see me as I was to see them
Two mourning doves sitting in front of a planter of herbs
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Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 10/07/2025
New ink for my beloved Suzy Creamcheese
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Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 24/06/2025
The Cherokee purple I have been EAGERLY tending got a sunburn today 😓
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Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 11/04/2025
Fucking outrageous way to communicate with constituents. I have to watch a video of this fool kissing Trump’s ass?!
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Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 05/04/2025
This morning I got a Google alert that my book THE SUN WON’T COME OUT TOMORROW was featured on a 7-min podcast episode, with a review. I listened to it and realized it was produced by AI, which I guess means they either fed the book or reviews of it through an LLM. These are the AI avatars:
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Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 05/04/2025
Dougie the cat forgives you
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Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 25/03/2025
Folks heading to #AWP2025 this week! I’m moderating a nonfiction panel about blending personal narrative with research and reporting, and our lineup is truly stellar: @lillydancyger.bsky.social, @sashabonet.bsky.social, @melissafebos.bsky.social, and Heather Radke! Come through on Saturday.
REPORTING THE SELF
From Personal Curiosity to Research and Reporting
Nonfiction writers often begin with personal questions before zooming out to consider the systems and histories that interact with their lives. Doing so poses questions: What are the limits of using the self as a lens? How do you decide which research and reporting to use?
How do you structure a book that blends the micro with the macro? A group of authors whose books braid memoir with research and reporting will discuss balancing these modes and the rewards of engaging deeply with the world.
Panelists: Sasha Bonét, Lilly Dancyger, Melissa Febos, Kristen Martin, and
Heather Radke
Saturday, Mar 29, 2025 3:20 PM - 4:35 PM PDT
Concourse Hall 152, Level One
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Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 07/03/2025
I’ll be signing copies of my book at the newly opened Barnes & Noble in Bryn Mawr tomorrow (3/8) from 12 to 3 PM! Come through!
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Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 19/02/2025
I may not live in Missouri, but I am the author of a book on the history of child welfare and family separation, so I wrote to the House committee on children and families urging them to reject the bill. Here’s what I said if it’s useful, and their emails:
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Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 14/02/2025
Obv my fave part of the Eagles parade
Skywriting reading JEOPARDY! 7P
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Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 05/02/2025
Perhaps you need two cats. I highly recommend two cats.
An orange tabby cat and a dilute calico kitten snuggling on an ottoman
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Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 28/01/2025
Wish I were one of my cats and had a walnut brain and didn’t need to think about the chaos agents running our country
An orange tabby cat and a dilute calico kitten snuggling
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Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 27/01/2025
I wrote about sharing my book's pub week with the dawn of Trump 2.0: americanorphan.substack.com/p/the-united...
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Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 24/01/2025
Thank you! My first book THE SUN WON’T COME OUT TOMORROW: THE DARK HISTORY OF AMERICAN ORPHANHOOD came out this Tuesday (!) #FridayReads www.boldtypebooks.com/titles/krist...
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Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 20/01/2025
The Gore Vidal quote comes from his essay “State of the Union: 2004,” where he looks back on a 1972 address he gave after the official SOTU, in the context of the second GWB admin. Here’s part that’s too prescient today
I should note that in the thirty-one years since this particular state of the union, our political vocabulary has been turned upside down. Although the secret core to each presidential election is who can express his hatred of the African-Americans most subtly (to which today can be added Latinos and "elite liberals"—a fantasy category associated with working film actors who have won Academy Awards)-and, of course, this season the so-called marriage-minded gays. So-called because there is no such human or mammal category (sex is a continuum) except in the great hollow pumpkin head of that gambling dude who has anointed himself the nation's moralist-in-chief. William "Bell Fruit" Bennett.
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Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 20/01/2025
My first book, THE SUN WON’T COME OUT TOMORROW, comes out tomorrow (apt title, eh?). Here are the epigraphs. www.boldtypebooks.com/titles/krist...
Happily, for the busy lunatics who rule over us, we are permanently the United States of Amnesia.
We learn nothing because we remember nothing.
—GORE VIDAL, IMPERIAL AMERICA
Most kids have folks to teach 'em things but we're just orphans and it's the hard-knock route for us.
—LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE COMIC STRIP, NOVEMBER 22, 1924
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Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 20/01/2025
Last up: I read Roxanna Asgarian’s WE WERE ONCE A FAMILY in the middle of my research and drafting of THE SUN WON’T COME OUT TOMORROW. It is perhaps the most important book written on foster care in the past decade and I’m hugely humbled that she blurbed my book. (20/20)
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Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 19/01/2025
Gabrielle Glaser’s AMERICAN BABY was one of the first books I read when I was working on my proposal and I used it as a comp. I’m so honored that she blurbed THE SUN WON’T COME OUT TOMORROW! (19/20)
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Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 18/01/2025
Though Kathryn Joyce focuses on international adoption here, THE CHILD CATCHERS was a useful (and infuriating!) text for establishing the evangelical zeal for adoption (and foster care) (18/20)
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Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 17/01/2025
One of the first books I read before I started work on my proposal, and the book that introduced me to RISE magazine, which highlights the voices of system-impacted parents (17/20)
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Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 17/01/2025
I’m hugely indebted to the work of Dorothy Roberts in these two books, twenty years apart, that articulate why “family policing” is an accurate descriptor for our country’s child welfare system, and why it should be abolished (16/20)
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Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 16/01/2025
We love David Lynch so much in our household that we have named two cats after Twin Peaks characters (see Janey-E and Dougie Jones below). So sad he’s gone.
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Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 16/01/2025
THE SUN WON'T COME OUT TOMORROW drops in ****5 days****! You can still preorder it and get 20% off directly through Bold Type/Public Affairs with code SUN20: bit.ly/49w5kn8
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Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 15/01/2025
THE SUN WON’T COME OUT TOMORROW is in many ways a history of American attitudes toward poverty, and Katz was a crucial source for me. (I’ll forever be kicking myself that I didn’t know of Katz when I was a Penn student and missed taking a course with him.) (15/20)
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Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 15/01/2025
One week out to book publication 😵‍💫🫠🤩! Today’s research title is Catherine E. Rymph’s excellent history of American foster care, which as a bonus features truly creepy photos from foster care advertisements (14/20)
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Kristen Martin @kwistent.bsky.social · 13/01/2025
I write less about adoption in THE SUN WON’T COME OUT TOMORROW than you might think, but Ellen Herman’s KINSHIP BY DESIGN—as well as her Adoption History Project at U of Oregon—were great resources (12/20)
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